Miley Parks, 10, a fifth-grader at Riverside Christian School in Trenton, Florida, works on a school assignment on her laptop.

As the COVID-19 pandemic forced the statewide shutdown of school campuses, Riverside Christian School principal Ginny Keith knew she’d have to act quickly to develop a game plan for distance learning.

“I didn’t know much about technology,” admitted Keith, principal of the 140-student K-12 school in Trenton, Florida, at the heart of rural Gilchrist County. Half of the students receive a Florida Tax Credit Scholarship for lower-income and working-class families; three attend on a Gardiner Scholarships for students with unique abilities. Both programs are administered by Step Up For Students, which hosts this blog.

Keith took a leap of faith and asked for help from what some would consider an unlikely ally: public school district staffers who made it possible for Riverside to be up and running with a distance learning program that included live online instruction.

Joe Mack Locke, who works in IT for the Levy County School District, didn’t hesitate to come to Riverside’s assistance.

Gilchrist County and its closest neighbors, Levy and Dixie counties, form a close-knit rural community where ties are strong, especially among educators. Riverside teacher Donna Goodson-King used to work with Locke in the Dixie County School District and once taught Locke’s daughter at a district high school. She also was married to Locke’s late cousin. So naturally, Goodson-King reached out to Locke when the school needed help.

“Education is a family in itself,” Goodson-King said.

With his school district’s approval, Locke helped set up Riverside’s Google infrastructure. A former colleague of Goodson-King’s from another neighboring county volunteered to teach staff how to use Google resources.

“Educating children is educating children, and we’re going to help them no matter who they are,” said Locke, who spent 17 years working in IT for the Florida Department of Corrections and saw firsthand the consequences of a poor education. “I’m in technology, but my job is to educate children using technology.”

Keith and her team soon were ready to launch. Count parent Judy Parks among the grateful.

“Everything is going pretty smoothly, and everyone is going with the flow,” said Parks, whose son, Kody, 15, and daughter, Miley, 10, attend Riverside, where Parks works as the school secretary.

The school uses a curriculum called Accelerated Christian Education Paces, which allows students to work at their own speed in each subject. Teachers initially gave quizzes along with a pre-test and a test for each unit but dropped the quizzes because they became too much to keep up with. Tests are given orally to remove any temptation for students to be less than rigorously honest.

Each school day, the Parks kids wake up, eat breakfast, make their beds, and then start their school day. Classes at Riverside are self-contained for younger students, while a small team of teachers educate students in higher grades. Attendance is taken by requiring each student to check in with his or her assigned teacher each day by Facebook, text or email.

The method doesn’t really matter, Keith said; turning in assignments also serves as proof of attendance. Those who haven’t been heard from by 3 p.m. each day get a phone call, she added.

Teachers host live teleconferences on Zoom and Google Meet and communicate via text or FaceTime.

“The teachers are available any time throughout the day and that makes it a blessing,” Parks said.

The live instruction has been the biggest hit with the kids.

“They can see one another, and they just get excited to see their friends and be social for a few minutes,” she said.

Locke, who also is a representative for Fellowship of Christian Athletes, isn’t stopping there. He’s now helping Riverside form its own FCA chapter.

“Whether these kids are living in your community, if you’re an educator, you don’t care,” Keith said. “They’re all our kids.”

As Florida officials prepare to discuss reopening brick-and-mortar schools in August, stakeholders urged members of the Florida Board of Education on Wednesday to use caution and involve health experts.

In comparing the reopening to flipping a light switch, Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran said he plans to “use a dimmer switch” approach. In addition to safety, he said, priorities include eliminating inequities that were exacerbated during the pivot to distance learning as well as mental health issues and food insecurity.

“We’ll be working though what these impacts are,” he said.

Details of the Florida Department of Education’s COVID-19 Education Recovery Plan outline call for using the state’s education slice of the federal CARES Act relief money for extended summer programs as well as extended school year programs and wrap-around programs to catch up students who fell behind during distance learning.

Congress has allocated $16.5 billion to the U.S. Department of Education to assist state and local education agencies in dealing with issues related to COVID-19.

Corcoran’s report also called for money to be dedicated to extended online learning, refreshing or replacing electronics that were used during the spring, and an infrastructure for future digital needs.

Board member Michael Olenick urged Corcoran to be proactive.

“I don’t think we should wait for the federal dollar figure and then accept it,” he said. “We should develop that figure and present it to the federal government.”

Corcoran’s report came as representatives from the Florida Association of District School Superintendents presented its recommendations for reopening.

The superintendent group’s recommendations, presented by Pinellas County Schools Superintendent Michael Grego, include forming a statewide “pandemic education response team” composed of medical professionals across Florida with guidance from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“The statewide pandemic education response team may need to consider a combination of social distancing/group gathering and personal protective measures/screening protocols to best mitigate exposure to COVID-19 while planning for a return to school that ensures the safety and well-being of all stakeholders,” the report said.

Grego said the superintendents have a meeting Thursday with medical professionals, including public health specialists, pediatricians and psychiatrists.

Board members took no votes on reopening plans but expressed support for Corcoran’s recommendations and for Gov. Ron DeSantis’ handling of the pandemic.

“I think our governor is doing a heck of a job handling this situation and trying to get our economy going again,” Chairman Andy Tuck said.

In other business, board members, acting as the trustee board for the Florida Virtual School, heard a brief update from its CEO, Louis Algaze, who said the nonprofit school system had reached its goal of boosting capacity to serve 2.7 million students by May 4.

“Should we see any resurgence in COVID-19, we’ll be available to assist,” Algaze said.

Florida Virtual School student Maya Washburn, pictured here in Lofoten Islands, Norway, has been able to keep up with her classes from anywhere in the world with her MacBook Air and a reliable WiFi connection.

When she was a junior in high school, Maya Washburn spent six weeks of her fall semester backpacking around Europe with her mother. From England to Sweden, Norway to Slovakia, the Czech Republic to Austria, the Fort Lauderdale teen never missed a day of class back home.

Her classrooms were trains, ferries, coffee shops, restaurants, hotel rooms, and even cabins at campsites. All she required to maintain her studies were her MacBook Air, a reliable WiFi connection – and Florida Virtual School (FLVS).

“It’s been amazing,” said Maya, 17. “I love making my mark on school and on the world. It’s brought out so many passions that I don’t think I ever would’ve discovered or tapped into if I was not a member of this school.”

FLVS may sound like a recent technology, but it dates to when “Seinfeld” was still the nation’s most-watched TV show. Founded in 1997 as the country’s first statewide K-12 virtual public school, Orlando-based FLVS operates as its own school district.

Over its two decades, FLVS students have successfully completed nearly 5 million semester courses, and not just in the Sunshine State – it has served students in all 50 states as well as more than 100 countries and territories around the world. Today, FLVS offers more than 190 courses, from core subjects such as English and Algebra to electives such as Guitar and Creative Photography. FLVS is available to full- and part-time (or “Flex”) students from public, private, charter and homeschool backgrounds.

Because FLVS’s funding is determined by successful course completions rather than time spent in a seat, students, teachers and parents have the flexibility to customize instruction to each student’s needs. Its graduates perform as well as or better than other students in Florida and the nation in most Advanced Placement course exams.

Unlike the scores of students who were forced by COVID-19 to become online learners, Maya went the virtual route willingly – she has been a full-time FLVS student since ninth grade. She will graduate this month with a 4.2 grade point average and has been accepted to the Florida International University Honors College, where she will pursue a pre-law curriculum.

For Maya, it was all about finding the right fit.

She initially attended a public elementary school but was miserable by third grade from being bullied. She transferred to a private school, which was terrific — until it wasn’t. In middle school, she became an outsider in a cliquish environment, and again was bullied.

“I never really fit into any box,” Maya said. “I’ve always marched to my own beat.”

Homeschooling, her first choice, was not an option – she’s the only child of a single mother who was working full time outside the home. So, she took the initiative to research Florida Virtual School. Mother and daughter agreed to give it a try.

Four years later, it has proved to be the right choice.

“FLVS was perfect for me,” Maya said. “I’m very self-disciplined, and FLVS has broadened my horizons in the sense that I directly apply what I learn in my courses to my everyday life, which I live outside of the clear-cut class times that I might have to stick to at a traditional brick-and-mortar school.”

She considers the flexibility and opportunities for growth provided by FLVS the perfect atmosphere for success.

“The learning environment has never been stagnant,” she said. “It’s ever-evolving.”

Maya experienced the usual jitters about adjusting to a new concept of learning. A friend who joined FLVS at the same time soon dropped out and returned to a brick-and-mortar school.

“She needed someone to sit next to every day, I completely get that. We had different learning styles,” Maya said. “It’s not for everyone.”

She acknowledges there was a bit of a learning curve, but otherwise says the transition was “pretty seamless.”

“The teachers are so encouraging and supportive and helpful,” she said. “It’s the best education I’ve ever received.”

Maya Washburn will graduate from Florida Virtual School this month with a 4.2 grade point average.

Although she attends an unconventional school, Maya still enjoys the conventional trappings of a high school social life. She’s belongs to six of the more than 50 clubs FLVS offers: Student Council, Mega News Network (which she helped found), National Honor Society, National English Honor Society, Virge Literary Arts Magazine – oh, and she just started Glee Club this year.

Students meet online and face to face. Student Council hosts Shark Week, which includes a daily virtual event – trivia day, costume day, contests – before culminating on Fridays with an in-person get-together. Maya’s favorite FLVS event is the annual Club Awards Day in Orlando, where students get to celebrate their clubs and be recognized for their accomplishments.

“That’s just a little taste of what we do,” Maya said. “We do a lot of connecting students to each other, and to students and administrators.”

The first day of Maya’s senior year began on a bus from Prague to Berlin last summer, when she and her mother returned to Europe for a three-month backpacking tour. She used her finely honed time management and prioritization skills to complete a dual-enrollment humanities class through Polk State College, while checking internet signals and time differences to ensure she could lead student council meetings despite being thousands of miles away.

Because Maya’s education has not been defined by the system she attended or by where she lives, she and her FLVS classmates already were surfing the wave when COVID-19 closed brick-and-mortar schools across Florida and sent teachers and students scrambling to institute a new, unfamiliar form of learning. In fact, FLVS stepped into the breach, providing 100 digital courses – core curriculum, electives, Advanced Placement, and career and technical education – free of charge to all K-12 Florida schools through June 30.

It also quickly ramped up its server capacity, from the 215,000 students it served last year to accommodate 320,000 students by March 31, to 470,000 by mid-April, to 2.7 million by May 4.

Alaska took notice and contracted with FLVS to provide online learning to about 150 students. FLVS also will train Alaska teachers how to lead online courses themselves, and then license its digital curriculum for use by the new Alaska Statewide Virtual School.

That was a swift reaction to a rapidly changing landscape with an eye on the future.

Among plans being bandied about for re-opening schools this fall is an option for continued learning at home for students from high-risk groups, such as those who live with elderly people and those with compromised immune systems. Other students who got a taste of remote education and enjoyed the flexibility it offers might opt to continue that route either full time or part time.

Maya already has felt the impact. When the student council met the Friday after the virus shut down Florida schools, members were told that the usual end-of-school-year officer elections was being postposed to the beginning of the next academic year because FLVS expects a lot of new students in the interim.

“FLVS is growing,” Maya said, “and it will become the new normal for a lot of students.”

Children who make use of education savings accounts, like JoEllen Talley of Mississippi, are one step ahead of many families who are struggling to find resources for their children with special needs.

As of today, school buildings likely will be closed for the rest of the academic year in all states except Montana and Wyoming. Ready or not, if you are a parent or guardian, you may be spending the next few weeks rotating from your household and work assignments to your child’s virtual school assignments.

The day before the AP story, an article in The Atlantic encouraged schools to do more to help parents by giving students more space between assignments and urged parents to “take charge of their kids’ schooling.”

The scenario can be a frightening prospect for parents of children with special needs.

At the outset of the pandemic, the U.S. Department of Education issued two “fact sheets” so that schools could attempt to move instruction online without fear of violating traditional equity requirements for these children. The fact sheets urged parents and educators to switch from “business as usual” to being “creative” to reconfigure learning during the pandemic.

The small cadre of parents and children using education savings accounts in Arizona, Florida, Mississippi, North Carolina and Tennessee are one step ahead here. Because these families can use their accounts to pay for learning services and materials in and outside of their child’s school, they have been able to adjust their student’s instruction according to his or her needs.

An education savings account ensures that Anna Ragusa of North Carolina can continue to receive needed therapies during social distancing.

“We’ve been busy,” says Cara Ragusa, whose daughter, Anna, was diagnosed with Down syndrome. “I’ve got two kids who have a full day’s worth of work every day.”

The family was one of the first in North Carolina to use an education savings account when the option became available two years ago.

“Because of the account, Anna’s been able to continue to get her therapies online through Zoom and different platforms for 30 minutes at a time,” Ragusa said.

Alisson Talley, whose 12-year old daughter, JoEllen, uses an account in Mississippi, said the essence of an education savings account is to pull in the right resources “to keep children learning the way they learn best.”

She explained that JoEllen, who lives with Down syndrome, has been forced by the pandemic to learn skills many children take for granted, such as proper e-mail etiquette. JoEllen has video conferences with her teachers in the morning, and they try to “simulate as much as they can from the regular classroom,” Talley said.

Meanwhile, Anna has meetings each week with a speech therapist and an occupational therapist.

“They share their screens and try to do interactive projects together,” Ragusa said.

Like everyone, the girls have had to adjust over the last two months.

“Anna thrives on repetitive routine for academic success, so that’s been a big setback while distance learning,” Ragusa said. “But having her teachers and therapists work with her regularly helps.”

Nearly two months into school closures, things are beginning to feel “a little bit normal,” she said, explaining that Anna sometimes has four calls or video chats each day involving work with her classroom teacher and different specialists.

Talley said the online coursework has been effective for JoEllen. But she worries that Mississippi lawmakers will try to cut online expenses from the list of available learning options next year, which would be “devastating.”

“It’s been refreshing to know that what we are asking for [to continue to purchase online services] works now,” she said. “It’s become a reality because it had to.”

What may not work for a child in one state will be a success for another with a similar diagnosis somewhere else. The same can be said for mainstream children, too.

This is why education savings accounts are so valuable to students from all walks of life, with or without special needs, inside or outside of a pandemic.

In this video special to redefinED, author and education reformer Michael Horn talks with education pioneer Julie Young, the founder of Florida Virtual School, a student-centered online-learning provider that focuses on competency based education rather than traditional seat time. Julie is now the CEO of Arizona State University Prep Digital, an online high school that offers an accelerated path toward college admission and the chance to earn concurrent high school and university credit.

Horn and Young discuss the ways in which COVID-19 is a moment for teachers and families to transform learning. They also discuss a new online learning case study Young co-authored that has been published by the Pioneer Institute.

“Right now, it’s about the fundamentals. Anything that is remotely filler needs to go away. What are the standards we need to meet to feel as if we have accomplished what we need for this school year? Let’s look closely at that and focus our plans around it.”

EPISODE DETAILS:

·How Arizona State University moved to full remote learning within 48 hours and the active role the university has taken in lending support to other schools

·What states and school districts should be doing to move from the crisis of shifting to distance learning toward a more stable, sustained distance learning future

·Preparing for a variety of fall schooling scenarios based on the virus’ effect, including continuing full-time remote learning for those who want it

·The benefits of mastery-based education models for students with unique abilities

·Incorporating social and emotional learning into the distance-learning model

Students in Jeanine Newcomb’s art class at Sacred Heart Catholic School in Pinellas Park, Fla., work with materials found in their yard for their online art lessons.

When the threat of COVID-19 forced schools to close their campuses in March and pivot almost overnight to distance learning, many found the challenge of moving English, math and science online daunting enough.

But what about subjects generally perceived as “enrichment” – the ones that don’t always rely on textbooks or set-in-stone lesson plans, like art?

Schoolhouse Preparatory in Miami, which serves students with learning differences and those who are at risk of not completing high school, encouraged students to take their art projects home with them when they collected their books and other materials. For the past few weeks, they’ve been working on those projects with virtual assistance from art teacher Elizabeth Baez.

Principal Jillian Tamayo De Villiers decided this was the best plan because she was unsure if the school’s 70 students would have access to art supplies in isolation. Nearly half attend the school on Florida Tax Credit Scholarships for lower-income families or Gardiner Scholarships for students with unique abilities.

Both programs are administered by Step Up For Students, which hosts this blog.

Jeanine Newcomb, who teaches art at Sacred Heart Catholic School in Pinellas Park, took a different route: She challenged her students to search their back yards for materials they could use to create mandalas and other one-of-a-kind masterpieces.

“I thought a ‘found objects’ assignment would be perfect, given I am not sure as to the limits of student art supplies,” said Newcomb, who drew inspiration from Andy Goldsworthy, a British artist known for using materials found in nature such as sticks, stones and flower petals in his landscape art. “The virtual method was new for all of us, so I wanted to keep it as simple and direct as possible on this first go-round.”

Newcomb encourages her students to upload images of their works in progress as well as their finished pieces and to write and share a short reflection on their experience.

“Some of the submissions brought me to tears – they were thoughtful, visually fascinating, and the written commentaries showed insight and new respect for the term ‘art’, said Newcomb, a veteran art educator who teaches all of the school’s 262 students, 172 of whom receive a Florida Tax Credit Scholarship.

Like Newcomb, art teachers throughout the state are exploring creative ways to touch their students’ lives beyond the defined walls of a brick-and-mortar classroom. Sarah Miller, who teaches art at Classical Preparatory, a charter school about 30 miles north of Tampa, has begun posting videos of herself making art and is encouraging her students to post their work as well.

“We can create the traditional way with paper, canvas, paint, pencils, or we can create on a digital platform,” Miller said. “We can virtually tour museums on the other side of the world without leaving our home.”

Rather than feeling restricted, Miller sees this time of social distancing as an opportunity.

“I want our virtual classroom to be an oasis where the students can talk freely with one another and myself and feel comfortable to post their work,” she said.

Students at Dixon School of Arts and Sciences in Pensacola create art as a way to de-stress during social distancing.

Miller isn’t alone in her belief that art can be a unifying force in uncertain times. Donna Curry, executive director of Dixon School of Arts and Sciences in Pensacola, launched a special therapy program to help students deal with the added stress that can come with isolation.

The school, whose mission is to provide creative experiences to students focusing on the arts and sciences, sent home kits with art supplies and links to online lesson plans. Curry regularly puts extra art supplies on the buses that distribute food to her families, most of whom take advantage of state scholarships.

She plans to begin holding twice-weekly online meetings for students to share their artwork and relate successes and challenges.

“Doing so releases some of the burden to make room for healing,” Curry said.

Editor’s note: This commentary from Travis Pillow, editorial director for the Center on Reinventing Public Education and former managing editor for redefinED, appeared April 25 on the CRPE website.

On March 13, Florida schools announced an extended spring break, which would be followed by a statewide shutdown extending into April—and now, through the end of the school year.

The initial closure order came on a Friday. The following Monday, the state’s largest school district, and the fifth largest in the nation, went live with its distance learning plan.

The initial effort in Miami-Dade Public Schools had its flaws. It took until the end of the first week to distribute thousands of technology devices and mobile hotspots to students. Teachers and students reported difficulty logging onto online learning platforms. Some online systems crashed. And the plan continues to evolve. The district didn’t start taking attendance until April 6.

Still, the district has consistently been ahead of its peers nationally in assuring that instruction would continue even though schools were closed. Miami-Dade’s position near the head of the pack might not come as a surprise. The district is becoming a national darling, thanks to rising student achievement, its proliferation of educational options, and its flamboyant superintendent.

But other Florida districts moved almost as quickly. A week after distance learning began in Miami-Dade, Duval County Schools returned from spring break and quickly went live with a detailed virtual learning plan that, unlike most remote plans in other parts of the country, called for teachers to deliver instruction and offer feedback on student work.

In early April, CRPE’s analysis of remote learning efforts in 82 school districts across the country showed that 6 of the 19 districts offering a combination of formal curriculum, instruction, and academic progress monitoring were in Florida. Half of the 16 districts tracking student attendance were in the Sunshine State.

The sample is not random, so it’s hard to draw clear conclusions about response efforts in different states (though CRPE will bring new data to bear on those questions in the coming weeks).

Still, Florida’s fast, fairly consistent rollout of remote learning highlights some unsung policy and leadership achievements that deserve more attention—from its sophisticated approach to virtual education to the skill and longevity of superintendents in some of its largest urban districts.

Since schools first closed in mid-March, Richard Corcoran, the state’s education commissioner, consistently asserted that schooling in Florida would continue, albeit virtually, while his peers in other states waffled or stayed quiet.

Education Reform Now’s analysis of state responses flagged Florida as one of the first states to accelerate remote learning from zero miles per hour to 65. But Florida schools didn’t start from a dead stop. They were already rolling, thanks in part to a series of policies put in place over the past decade. Since mid-March, school and district leaders have stepped on the gas.

A national leader in virtual learning is right in the backyard

Florida is home to the nation’s largest public virtual school. Headquartered in Orlando, Florida Virtual School (FLVS) functions like a school district, with a state-appointed board. But it also behaves like an independent enterprise, offering courses to students all over the world and partnering with schools—including districts, private and charter schools, even homeschooling cooperatives—to help them offer virtual courses using its technology and, in some cases, its teachers.

Corcoran and other state officials are tapping this resource in their crisis response. The virtual school is allowing tens of thousands more students to enroll in more than 100 courses, without diverting any funding away from the school districts these students normally attend.

There’s no question the presence of FLVS will help support Florida students through the move to remote learning. It’s also offering online education resources to parents and educators.

But the statewide virtual school has also played an underappreciated role helping districts across the state build out their own virtual learning programs.

Every school district in the state has some virtual learning capacity

For most of its 23-year history, FLVS never competed directly with school districts for funding. It was funded through a standalone line item in the state budget. Districts didn’t lose any revenue if a student enrolled in an FLVS course, and frequently referred students to FLVS for enrichment, summer learning, or classes they couldn’t offer themselves—such as electives, foreign languages, or Advanced Placement.

A growing number of districts began using FLVS technology and know-how to operate their own virtual schools.

The landscape shifted in 2013 when state lawmakers passed an overhaul of virtual learning funding and policy. The new law pitted districts and FLVS competition for students and funding. It also required every district in the state to offer a suite of online learning options—some of which would be operated by well-known online learning companies, such as K12.

The increased competition for students and funding encouraged more school districts to promote their own virtual schools, often FLVS franchises, to compete for virtual students. Almost every large or midsize district in the state now operates a virtual school that employs a local principal and local teachers. Most small districts are members of rural consortia that do the same.

This might not have prepared the state’s brick-and-mortar classroom teachers for the rapid shift to virtual learning. But it meant that nearly every district in the state had educators and administrators on staff with experience running virtual schools.

As Kevin Hendrick, associate superintendent for Pinellas County Schools, told the Tampa Bay Times before remote learning began: “We have some teachers who do this every day. We have the model. … It’s just a matter of taking it out to the masses.”

As Superintendent Alberto Carvalho recently recounted, the district had been monitoring the crisis and planning in advance. The district published the first iteration of its instructional continuity plan before schools closed and encouraged others to borrow its ideas.

Other large districts also had a jump start. Rob Bixler, the associate superintendent for curriculum and digital learning at Orange County Public Schools, noted that the Orlando school district’s initial remote learning plan came together in the course of a week.

The district already had practices in place—including one-laptop-per-student policies in all of its middle and high schools, as well as partnerships with companies that provided mobile hotspots—that simply needed to be consolidated in one document.

And since the department in charge of instructional technology also writes curriculum, the district office can share its low-tech solutions—such as lesson packets mailed to tens of thousands of elementary school families—with teachers so they can prepare in advance to help students with their work.

“We are constantly adjusting, troubleshooting and brainstorming to support our students, teachers and parents,” Bixler wrote in an email.

Orange and Miami-Dade Counties were among the first large urban districts in the country to carry out remote learning plans that called for teachers to deliver instruction and monitor their students’ academic progress. Florida’s remaining large urban districts (Broward, Duval, Hillsborough, and Palm Beach and Pinellas Counties) joined them near the head of the pack.

Other districts in the state borrowed elements of the early movers’ plans and swapped ideas behind the scenes, at times with the help of groups such as the Florida Association of District School Superintendents, which often serves as a hub for problem solving among the state’s 67 district leaders.

After the frenetic first few weeks, Florida districts have begun to stabilize. Miami-Dade rolled out version 2.0 of its remote learning plan earlier this month. It included plans to track student attendance, which has revealed what Carvalho has called “digital deserts,” where students from low-income and immigrant communities struggle to connect with their schools. Moving quickly allowed these districts to discover barriers quickly, and start working on solutions.

What other states can learn from Florida’s example

Some of the policies that helped normalize virtual education across Florida might not be worth replicating. The state requires every public school student to take an online course before they graduate—a requirement that’s come under criticism and seen some changes.

But some of the policies and leadership decisions that helped Florida districts respond quickly to this crisis could be useful elsewhere.

Among them:

·Assertive state leadership articulated a clear expectation that instruction would continue, albeit remotely, when school campuses were closed, but gave districts flexibility to figure out many of the details.

·The state has intentionally fostered organizations, such as FLVS, that are designed to drive innovation—by serving students directly, partnering with other schools, and serving as a statewide resource.

·Rather than cede the online learning market to an oligopoly of large virtual charter schools with questionable business practices, poor outcomes, and ill-conceived oversight, Florida’s virtual education policy has encouraged a diffusion of virtual education expertise into school districts, and enables competition between different providers—including FLVS, local district programs, well-known national players such as K12 and Connections Academy, charter school organizations such as Academica (which came quickly out of the gate with its own remote learning effort), and other online providers. The framework is far from perfect but has produced a more diverse array of online learning options than exist in other states.

·High-capacity leaders in large districts proactively prepared for a disruption and shared their plans with the state Department of Education and counterparts in other districts.

All of these conditions helped enable the rapid rollout of remote learning in Florida—and could enable faster disaster responses or more diverse online learning ecosystems in other states.

In this episode of podcastED, Step Up For Students President Doug Tuthill and Florida Senate Education Committee Chairman Manny Diaz, R-Hialeah, discuss how public education shifts are ramping up due in part to COVID-19.

Among other topics, Tuthill and Diaz discuss policy changes that will be required to allow families to continue to educate their children based on subject competency rather than brick-and-mortar seat time. Both believe the expansion of Education Scholarship Accounts will provide families key flexibility.

Diaz: “Families will discover they can be more effective and more efficient with their time … more seat time doesn’t mean more learning.”

EPISODE DETAILS:

·How public and private schools alike have innovated on the fly to remain open during the pandemic

·Florida’s unique position as a leader in education choice, which will allow for policy flexibility for families now and in the future

·Florida Virtual School, its work in Alaska, and its competency-based model of learning vs. traditional seat-time learning

·Funding and policy shifts that must occur, including expansion of Education Scholarship Accounts